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The B.C. Liberals are refusing to pull an online video that attacks New Democratic Party leader Adrian Dix over an answer he gave during the televised leaders’ debate.

Released Wednesday morning, the video attacked Dix for citing his age during his explanation for backdating a memo while working as chief of staff to former premier Glen Clark.

“It was my responsibility, it was my mistake,” Dix said in an answer about the memo during the debate. “I take responsibility and have ever since. I was 35 years old, I made a serious mistake.”

In a clear tactic by the Liberals to raise the memo with voters on the eve of next week’s election, the video included an excerpt of Dix’s debate answer, along with criticism from various Liberal candidates, all under the age of 35.

“I’m a lawyer; the age of adulthood in this province is 19. Look it up,” adds Sukhminder Singh Virk, 29, the party’s candidate in Surrey-Newton.

Within hours of the video being posted, a representative for the consortium that organized the television debate demanded it be pulled, saying the footage is copyrighted and all parties agreed would be off-limits for partisan use.

“The political parties involved agreed that no use of the copyrighted broadcast would be allowed for any political purposes,” wrote Les Staff, news director at CTV, who was writing on behalf of the consortium,

“Please have this copyrighted material removed immediately.”

Staff sent the notice on Wednesday to the copyright enforcement department at YouTube — the site used by the B.C. Liberals to host the video — and copied all political parties involved in the debate and all members of the consortium.

Staff said that besides the attack ad, the consortium also wants the Liberals to remove a video the party has posted showing the debate in its entirety.

In an interview Wednesday, B.C. Liberal Party spokesman Sam Oliphant said the party has no immediate intention of removing the videos. “We believe we have a right to use it and we’re talking to our lawyers about that right now.”

Contacted after Oliphant made that statement, Staff said the Liberals had not yet provided an official response to the consortium.

“I have had a direct conversation with Sam Oliphant at the Liberal Party and informed him of the copyright infringement. I have advised the party that the videos contain copyrighted material and that the B.C. Liberal Party logo and name appear on the YouTube video headline,” he said in an email.

“I have demanded that the videos be removed immediately,” he added. “The party has promised they will look into it.”

As of 8 p.m. Wednesday, the YouTube address of the video had changed, but it remained online.

The showdown over the video less than a week before next Tuesday’s election illustrates the intensification of the campaign as it enters the final days.

Before Wednesday was over, the New Democrats had released an online video of their own responding directly to the Liberal one featuring the young candidates.

“So, let’s talk about responsibility,” said the NDP video, which featured several young people, most of whom are NDP staffers.

“It’s time the B.C. Liberals took responsibility for their record.”

The young NDPers cited the past 12 years of B.C. Liberal government, saying the Liberals should take responsibility for misleading British Columbians about the HST, for the BC Rail scandal and for the ‘quick wins’ ethnic outreach scandal.

The video‘s message was similar to that of an advertisement released by the NDP on Wednesday morning. Both spots took a much sharper tone than the party has in its campaign so far.

Beyond the ad war, the party leaders also took aim at each other on the campaign trail Wednesday.

“It’s time for a change and I think if the Liberal party thinks that they can mislead people at the end of a campaign with personal attacks, they’re wrong,” said Dix.

“They have driven through every four-way stop to mislead,” he said, apparently referring to an incident where Liberal leader Christy Clark advanced through a stale red light with her son in the car.

Clark said her error and Dix’s can’t be compared.

“My response for going through a red light after I’d stopped, which is something that I shouldn’t have done, was that it was wrong, I shouldn’t have done it. I didn’t say, ‘You know what, I’m only 47.”’

She told reporters the 13-year-old incident involving Dix is fair game because he is hiding his party’s positions and refusing to say where he wants to take the province.

“I don’t think that the date for ethical behaviour starts when you turn 36, I think it starts a lot younger than that.”

Voters can expect more of the same over the coming days, because parties have found that attack ads work. Past and even current campaigns suggest that even if voters don’t like the ads, they still can have an impact.

In past elections, the provincial NDP has scored its own attack-ad successes.

Bill Tieleman, president of West Star Communications and Glen Clark’s communications director during the 1996 election campaign, said in a recent opinion piece in The Tyee that negative advertising served his party well in that election.

“Those ads, brilliantly created by NOW Communications, featured grainy black-and-white photos of a scary Gordon Campbell with an ominous deep male announcer’s voice talking about B.C. Liberal plans to slash public services, then asking: ‘Gordon Campbell: Whose side is he on anyway?’” Tieleman wrote.

“The combination of heavy negative advertising against the B.C. Liberals — who initially held a 30-point lead — and positive action by the NDP government combined to give Glen Clark a stunning upset victory.”

While voters may say they are not influenced by attack ads, studies have shown that they can have the desired impact on voting behaviour.

U.S. psychologists Drew Westen and Joel Weinberger found in a 2008 study that despite a conscious reaction in which viewers said they disliked negative ads, subconsciously they were affected by them in exactly the way the ads intended.

That success is why attack ads have not only survived but thrived ever since 1964, when the granddaddy of political attack ads — the one that launched the genre — had Lyndon Johnson implying that voting for his opponent in the U.S. presidential election would result in Armageddon. The ad never mentioned Republican candidate Barry Goldwater by name, but managed to convey to voters that Goldwater would lead the country into a nuclear war.

The American success with attack ads won over Canadian politicians. The federal Conservatives revelled in attack ads targeting former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff in the last election; they’ve now shifted to Justin Trudeau.

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